I haven’t tested/verified this myself but I’ve heard that mycelium grows particularly well on millet and rye berries. Might be a couple to add into your experimenting.

Where I’m at, we’re actually getting a decent amount of solar, but unfortunately the power district is building the solar fields over some remnant tallgrass prairie, probably since it’s cheaper than buying agricultural or residential land. This sucks since we’ve destroyed 98% of all the tallgrass prairie in the US, which makes it one of the most endangered biomes in the world, which is extra sucky since tallgrass prairie is one the most effective biomes at sequestering carbon, much more than even forests/woodlands.

Insect was inside a decayed hardwood log. Unsure of insect species but IIRC tenuipes usually attacks Lepidopterans

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May have triple posted this due to some issues on KBin, I tried deleting the other two.

One of the eastern North American Destroying Angel species. Found on a ridge in a hickory-oak woodland in southeast Nebraska.

In my experience, with both coding and natural sciences, a slightly incorrect answer that you attempt to apply, realize is wrong in some way during initial testing/analysis, then you tweak until it’s correct, is very useful, especially compared to not receiving any answer or being ridiculed by internet randos.

Nearest tree was a spruce of some sort, with a blue spruce and a couple linden trees also relatively nearby. Thinking Hortiboletus rubellus or Boletus harrisonii, but very unsure.

Didn’t use a tripod so I didn’t get the same angle/framing. Found near some burr oaks in a hardwood woodland in eastern Nebraska. UV is 365nm wavelength

The fact that it had no blood in it is a sign that it likely wasn’t there long, so the odds of you obtaining a tick-borne disease are very low. A tick needs to be embedded for a decent length of time to really have any odds of spreading a disease (I’ve heard anywhere from 10-24 hours although this is likely affected by multiple factors), and even if embedded long enough, the odds are still pretty low.

Lyme disease is only carried by one genus of ticks that I’m aware of (Ixodes), so if you have a picture of the tick or remember what it looks like clearly enough, you can try to find out whether it was Ixodes or not. Even if it’s not Ixodes, other ticks can carry other types of tick-borne disease (Rocky Mountain fever, Ehrlichiosis, etc).

The only thing to keep an eye out at this point is to see if symptoms form. The main things you’re looking for are fever and/or rash/inflammation in the affected area. If you do get symptoms, it could also just be a regular infection, but nonetheless you should see a doctor and explain about the tick and when/where you might have gotten it. If there are symptoms, all that you’ll have to do generally is to go through a round of anti-biotics if you catch it quickly enough (usually more severe complications don’t start occuring til a couple weeks in).